Frutolf of Michelsberg (died 17 January 1103) was a monk in

Michelsberg Abbey Michaelsberg Abbey or Michelsberg Abbey, also St. Michael's Abbey, Bamberg (german: Kloster Michaelsberg or ''Michelsberg'') is a former Benedictine monastery in Bamberg in Bavaria, Germany. After its dissolution in 1803 the buildings were us ...

Bamberg Bamberg (, , ; East Franconian: ''Bambärch'') is a town in Upper Franconia, Germany, on the river Regnitz close to its confluence with the river Main. The town dates back to the 9th century, when its name was derived from the nearby ' castle. C ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, of which he became

prior Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be l ...

. He was probably a native of

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

. Frutolf was possibly a teacher of the

quadrivium From the time of Plato through the Middle Ages, the ''quadrivium'' (plural: quadrivia) was a grouping of four subjects or arts—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—that formed a second curricular stage following preparatory work in the ...

in the monastery, but principally a librarian and manuscript copyist. In this capacity he was responsible for a substantial increase in the stock of the Michelsberg library. Some of the manuscripts he copied are still extant. He was also an author, writing in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. His "Chronicle of the World" (''Chronica'') is among the most complete and best-organised of the early

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

. It extends from the creation to 1099 and after Frutolf's death was edited and extended by other Michelsberg monks. It is also fairly certain that a "Breviary of Music" (''Breviarium de musica'') is by him. An unedited liturgical treatise entitled ''De officiis divinis'' (On the divine offices) survives in Frutolf's own hand in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Lit. 134. He may also have written ''De rhithmomachie'', a work concerning a popular medieval mathematical and strategy based board game. He developed a critical view of history and awareness of

anachronism An anachronism (from the Ancient Greek, Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronology, chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time per ...

, among other things pointing out that "some songs as 'vulgar fables' made

Theoderic the Great Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy b ...

Attila Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European traditio ...

and

Ermanaric Ermanaric; la, Ermanaricus or ''Hermanaricus''; ang, Eormanrīc ; on, Jǫrmunrekkr , gmh, Ermenrîch (died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia ...

into contemporaries, when any reader of

Jordanes Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Goths, Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history (''Romana ...

knew that this was not the case".The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, page 245, Yitzhak Hen, Matthew Innes, Cambridge University Press, 2000. .

Sources

* Waitz, G. (ed.), 1844: ''Ekkehardi Uraugiensis Chronica'', MGH SS 6, 33-210. Stuttgart:

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empire ...

online
* Schmale, Franz-Josef (ed.), 1972: ''Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die anonyme Kaiserchronik''. in I. Schmale-Ott: ''Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters'' (Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gedächtnisausgabe), vol. 15, 1972; includes inter alia ''Einführung zu Frutolf'', pp. 4–19; ''Frutolfs Chronik'', pp. 46–121 (Latin/German text from the year 1000 onwards) * Schmale, F.-J., Schmale-Ott (eds.), MGH 33 *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''Music, scholasticism and reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125'' (Manchester, 2009), pp. 40–3, 94–108. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, the schools of Bamberg and the transmission of imperial polemic’, ''Haskins Society Journal'' 23 (2011), 51–70. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''Chronicles of the Investiture Contest: Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators'' (Manchester, 2014). . *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘''Quos manu sua pene omnes ipse scripsit'': Frutolf of Michelsberg’s legacy to a Bamberg scriptorium’, in A. Nievergelt et al. (eds), ''Scriptorium. Wesen, Funktion, Eigenheiten'' (Comité international de Paléographie latine, XVIII. Internationaler Kongress St. Gallen 11.–14. September 2013; Munich, 2015), pp. 325–37. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘Scriptural allusion in the crusading accounts of Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators’, in E. Lapina and N. Morton (eds), ''The uses of the Bible in crusader sources'' (Leiden, 2017), pp. 152–75. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''The continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg's Chronicle'' (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 74; Wiesbaden, 2019).

References

German Benedictines German chroniclers 11th-century Latin writers 11th-century births 1103 deaths People of medieval Bavaria German male non-fiction writers 11th-century German historians Medieval music theorists 12th-century German historians {{RC-bio-stub